education: 1985 - University of the Philippines Diliman, 1978 - Ateneo de Manila University, 1968 - Assumption College San Lorenzo, 1966 - Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, 1964 - Assumption Convent High School, University of the Philippines School of Econo

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is a Filipino politician who went on to become the first female Vice President of Philippines and also served two terms as the president of the country. Daughter of former President Diosdado Macapagal, politics was not something that Gloria had in her mind early on in her life. She studied economics and obtained a Ph.D. in the subject, before going on to work as a professor at some of the leading educational institutions in Philippines. In 1987, she joined the government of Corazon Acquino as Undersecretary in the Department of Trade and Industry. She was senator for six years from 1992 to 1998 before she was elected as the Vice President under the presidency of Joseph Estrada. She served as President of Philippines from 2001 to 2010. Her presidency was fraught with troubles as she had to fight impeachment charges, quell internal disturbances and terrorist threats. Following the end of her second tenure as the president she found herself in considerable trouble as she was charged with electoral malpractice and corruption that saw her being sent to jail. In 2016, she was acquitted of all the charges.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was born on 5 April 1947 in San Juan, Philippines, to Diosdado Macapagal and Evangelina Macaraeg Macapagal,. His father was a politician who went on to become President of Philippines. She had two half sisters.

In her childhood, she lived in Iligan City with her maternal grandmother from the age of four to seven and then switched her stay between the cities of Mindanao and Manila in the subsequent years. In 1961, she started living in Manila permanently after his father became the President.

She studied at the Assumption Convent and graduated from the school in 1964. Following her high school graduation, she went to the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, in Washington DC. Former US President Bill Clinton was one of her batch mates at the Walsh School.

Subsequently, she studied at Assumption College in Makati City, Philippines and received her bachelors’ degree in economics in 1968. In 1978, she attained a master’s degree in economics from the Ataneo de Manila University.

In 1977, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo started teaching economics and for the next ten years she taught simultaneously in different institutions including the Ataneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines. It was during this period that she was also awarded her doctorate in economics by the University of the Philippines located in Quezon City.

In 1987, the then President of Philippines, Corazon Aquino, offered her the position of Undersecretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, which Gloria accepted.

In 1992, she entered electoral politics and became a senator. She served as senator for six years and during her term as senator, she authored or sponsored several landmark bills, such as the Anti-Sexual Harassment Law, the Indigenous People's Rights Law, and the Export Development Act.

In 1998, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo decided to run for the presidency but instead chose to contest the election for the Vice President and was elected as the first female Vice President of Philippines. Concurrently, she held the cabinet position of Secretary of Social Welfare and Development. Two years into her tenure, Arroyo resigned amid corruption allegations against the then president Joseph Estrada.

President Joseph Estrada was forced out of the presidential palace in 2001 by protestors who were enraged at the corruption scandal that he was allegedly involved in and in the same year Arroyo took over the reins of the presidency. Her presidency was beset with problems as the supporters of President Estrada continued to protest and she had to suppress a coup by disaffected soldiers.

At the end of his first term as president in 2004, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo decided to run for the presidency and was elected again on the back of a campaign that banked on rooting out corruption and developing the economy. The following year she was accused of election malpractice but she was not impeached even though a case was filed for the same.

In 2006, Arroyo dealt with a military coup and in the same year she declared a state of emergency in the Philippines that lasted for a week. Three years later Arroyo imposed martial law in Mindanao when one of her political allies killed an opponent and in addition to that she severed all ties with the responsible allies.

Following the end of her second term as president in 2010, Arroyo entered the House of Representatives from the 2nd District of Pampanga. In 2011, she was arrested on the charges of electoral sabotage and was put under hospital arrest due to her ill health. However, Arroyo contested those charges and pleaded not guilty.

In 2012, it was revealed that Arroyo and her husband had embezzled funds from a telecom company in China and in the same year she was also charged with misusing $8.8 million from the state lottery funds. She was subsequently sent to hospital arrest at the Veterans Memorial Medical Centre.

In 2013, she won the election to the House of Representatives but despite attempts to get bail citing her ill health, she remained in custody and was in confinement at the Veteran's Medical Center.

On July 19, 2016, the Supreme Court acquitted her of corruption charges by a vote of 11-4.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had a long political career in which she held plenty of important positions and his most important work was to provide a sense of calm when Philippines was being ravaged with anti-corruption protests in 2001.